from the
Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Center for Public Policy
Research for his work in defending property rights and advancing private
conservation

Host(s): The Heritage Foundation

Location:
The Heritage Foundation's Allison Auditorium

Held in
conjunction with Thomas Jefferson’s birthday (which this year falls on
Saturday, April 12), Private Conservation Day provides the opportunity to honor
and learn from those who best exemplify the Jeffersonian ideal of environmental
stewardship in concert with private property rights and limited
government. Past recipients of the
Private Conservationist of the Year Award have been individual property owners
who have undertaken remarkable projects to protect the scenic beauty and
wildlife on their land. This year’s
recipient, Robert J. “R. J.” Smith, will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award
for his forty-year career steadfastly defending property rights and championing
private conservation. Before receiving
the award, Mr. Smith will speak on the limited-government principles and the
history of private conservation that have motivated his scholarship and
advocacy.

R. J. Smith
founded and directs the Center for Private Conservation and also currently
serves as Senior Fellow at the National
Center for Public Policy
Research and as Distinguished Adjunct Scholar at the Competitive Enterprise
Institute. He previously served as
Senior Environmental Scholar at CEI, Director of Environmental Studies at the
Cato Institute, and as a consultant to the Department of the Interior and to
the President’s Council on Environmental Quality and as special assistant at
the EPA. Mr. Smith coined the term
“free-market environmentalism” and has been the free market environmental
movement’s leading formulator and advocate.
He has been involved actively in every major environmental issue
involving federal lands and private property since the 1960s. In particular, he has been a major advocate
of reforming the Endangered Species Act, which he has persuasively argued is
failing to protect wildlife because it fails to respect property rights. He has also been the chief chronicler of the
history of private conservation efforts and of the environmental degradation
caused by public ownership of land. Mr.
Smith’s career has combined his lifelong love of nature and bird-watching with
his passionate commitment to a free society.
Mr. Smith, an Oregon native, graduated
from Stanford University
with a degree in geology and also studied economics at New
York University,
where he studied under renowned Austrian
School economist Ludwig
von Mises.